Marathon runners’ bodies have a surprising snack — their own brains

Running an entire marathon takes a lot of energy. Neuroscientist Carlos Matute knows this: he’s run 18 of them. He wondered how runners’ bodies get the energy they need to make it to the finish line. His new research in the journal Nature Metabolism may be the first step in answering the question – and suggests their brains might be (temporarily) depleting a fatty substance that coats nerve cells called myelin. Have other questions about the brain? Let us know by emailing shortwave@npr.org ! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave .

Artemis II Insignia Honors All

The four astronauts who will be the first to fly to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis campaign – NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen – have designed an emblem to represent their mission that references both their distant destination and the home they will return to.

What Is the True Promise of Quantum Computing?

Quantum computing promises unprecedented speed, but in practice, it’s proven remarkably difficult to find important questions that quantum machines can solve faster than classical ones. One of the most notable demonstrations of this came from Ewin Tang, who rose to prominence in the field as a teenager. When quantum algorithms had in principle cracked the so-called recommendation problem… Source